California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law Wednesday limiting full-contact practices for youth football players throughout the state.
Starting immediately, youth football teams only have 30 minutes per day of full-contact practices for two days a week and completely bans full-contact practices for youth football during the offseason.
Teams must also have a medical professional present at all games and someone who can watch and pull players out of practice of they show signs of injury during practice.
This is a change from the previous laws that only allowed youth football to no more than 90 minutes per day, twice per week of full-contact practices.
Instead of having around 180 minutes per week with full contact, players and coaches only have around 60 minutes per week.
But, this change was done with the players health in mind.
In order to prevent chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, researchers believe limiting blows to the head in football can have a positive effect on the health of players.